Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies

by Melvin R. Gilmore

The cottonwood was found growing over a widely extended range, under diverse climatic conditions, appearing always self-reliant, showing prodigious fecundity, and having wonderful means of propagation. It provided its seed, produced in enormous number, with a device by which they traveled on the wind to far places and so became widely disseminated in all directions, traveling up-stream or down-stream, and even across the plains and prairies to other streams where the new generation might establish itself. But besides this admirable provision to insure the perpetuation of its kind it had also another means of propagation; though by this means it could move only down-stream. This method of propagation is by the making of cuttings or planting slips from its own twigs. It is well known that the gardener may make artificial cuttings of many kinds of trees and plants, and so increase his stock. But the cottonwood, alone among trees, performs this operation itself. At the beginning of autumn the cottonwood trees form layers of cork cells which gradually wedge off part of its twigs from the parent branch, thus covering and healing the wound of separation and also covering and healing the base of the separated twig so that it falls off alive and protected from loss of sap.

Falling thus to the ground just about the time that autumn rains are about to begin, they are ready to be carried away by the rising waters of the streams and may be thus planted in a mud or sand bank further down stream, ready to take root and grow in the springtime.

In the springtime the opening of the cottonwood buds and pushing out of the young leaves, even when chilly nights follow the bright breezy days and the rapid growth of these lustrous leaves, brightly dancing in the spring winds, their brilliant sheen and active movement reflecting the splendour of the sun like the dancing, glinting ripples of a lake, suggest the joy and eagerness and energy of movement of all returning life.

The foliage of the cottonwood is peculiar and remarkable so that it may be said the air is never so still that there is not motion of cottonwood leaves. Even in still and sultry summer afternoons, and at night when all else was still, ever they could hear the rustling of cottonwood leaves by the passage of little vagrant currents of air. Secret messages seemed ever to be passing in soft whispers among the cottonwood leaves. And the winds themselves are the bearers of the messages and commands of the Higher Powers, so there was constant reminder of the mystic character of this tree.

The cottonwood was, among trees, the symbol of fidelity, one of the four great virtues inculcated by the ethical code of the people of the Dakota nation.

So from all these considerations, it might be expected that this tree should have an important place in the rituals of the people for many generations associated with it. And so it had.

The Sacred Pole of the Omaha nation was made of the cottonwood. The Sacred Pole was an object of the greatest veneration to the people of that nation, similarly as the Ark of the Covenant was sacred to the Hebrew nation.

The Sacred Tree, the central object of the Sun Dance, the most momentous religious ritual of the Dakota nation, was a cottonwood. The tree which should be chosen to be felled and brought into camp and set up in the lodge erected for the performance of this ritual, must be a growing cottonwood tree, the base of whose trunk is not less than two spans in circumference. The tree must be straight and forked at a distance from the ground of about four times the measure of the outstretched arms from hand to hand.

Twigs and bark of cottonwood were burned as incense to ward against the scheming of Anog Ite, the spiteful malevolent being who foments scandals, strife and infidelity.

Such then, were some of the relations in the philosophic thought, the religious conceptions and the sentiments of the people of the Dakota nation in regard to these three species of trees.